Chinese New Year

While my American friends and family were celebrating Pączki Day and Fat Tuesday, I was celebrating Chinese New Year. An international student from Taiwan, also my group therapy co-facilitator, invited my whole course, among others, to attend a workshop that she and her flat mates held in my building’s common room.

We began with a dumpling tutorial:

1. place the pork and chive filling in the center
2. dip your fingers in water and wet the perimeter
3. fold in half and squeeze

This was fun for a second, but turned into a chore as soon as the second batch of meat filled containers were placed on the table. There was a plate with a few plastic wrapped pence, to include in the "lucky" dumplings. This was a nice idea in whimsical theory, but I was terrified that I would end up with a lucky dumpling later and shatter at least one of my teeth. 

Eventually, my course mates and I decided to call it a day on the dumpling front and move on to paper cutting crafts. We began by making red paper designs. These are to hang in the window to scare away the monster, who is afraid of red, so it does not come and eat people (this is what I gathered from the story, anyway). In reality, we made red snowflakes, and hung them on the wall.

However, they were nowhere near as beautiful and intricate as the one made by the hosts prior to the workshop. Here is a prime example of their work:

We then moved on to making paper mobiles of the Chinese character for "Spring", because the New Year symbolizes the beginning of spring. I'm not sure why this was so difficult for me, and I mostly felt like a complete idiot, frequently asking for help. Geometry and exactness are not my strong suits. However, I was thrilled with the end result.

                                             

Next, I tried my hand at calligraphy. We were supposed to also learn the character for Spring... but I asked to learn the character for "dinosaur". Unfortunately, "dragon" was the closest I could get. I thoroughly enjoyed the activity, none the less.

By the time I had finished, it was time for food! 

This was only the first round of food. There were two more table fulls afterward. It was amazing to have real, traditional Chinese food. Everything tasted absolutely incredible. My favorite dishes ended up being ginger vegetables, but the beef soup and barbecue pork were both fabulous. And, of course, I got a dumpling with a coin in it. I suppose part of the luck included my own dental safety.

After dinner, Natascha handed out envelopes filled with "lucky coins" for the new year. My envelope had the symbol for "wealth" on it and had a chocolate "hug" coin inside. That pretty much summed up my experience of the evening. It was a fun, sweet, cultural hug of an event.